Go Ask Alice: Part One

courtesy of morguefile.com

Alice grew up in New Jersey. She had the accent and the attitude to match. I have no idea how she ended up in a nursing home in southern Indiana. She didn't really, either. That part of her memory was a little sketchy.

She wore her glasses every day: great beetley red plastic frames, at least fifteen years out of date and smudged almost to opacity. She was completely blind. Cataracts, you know. But the glasses were a part of her face. Some niceties must be observed. Like the one that dictated going each Friday to get her hair washed and set into a sproingy, iron-gray helmet. Like the one that dictated carrying a purse to the dining room because a lady never leaves the house without her purse. The one that necessitated wearing pantyhose with slacks. The one that necessitated calling them "slacks".

Other niceties? Eh, she would say, those we can let slide. The ones like please and thank you. The ones like not screaming and cursing at the nursing and activities staff. The ones like not calling a fellow resident a "crusty old bitch". And all niceties went out the window altogether if anyone dared interrupt her for any reason while she was listening to the Yankees play.

She was cantankerous and rude. She would wind up her Jersey upbringing and holler at me with flat vowel sounds and call me names when I stopped by her room to invite her to activities. Oh yes, dear, she'd say with sweet sarcasm, I'd love to go and watch Lawrence Welk with a bunch of drooling lunatics who piss themselves. Getouttahere! She thought everyone was stupid and told them so in no uncertain terms. I'm almost 90 and I can do whatever I goddamn well please. Get a job! She was a tall woman with a big, deep voice for her age and I could easily imagine her in younger days with a baseball bat, collecting debts for someone named Vinny.

She was a scary old broad, Alice was, and I loved her for it.

I took the job at a nursing home against all reason. But you're afraid of sick people, my mother said. And rightly so. The smells, the bodily functions... are you sure you want to do this? What about a nice desk job? My other top choice was at the oil change place. The owner looked me up and down and stood next to the "Help Wanted" sign and told me he wasn't hiring, honey. But I know how to change oil, I said. It didn't matter, really. This was the heartland. Boys will be boys and men doing men's work and so on. No room for a scrawny girl with dyed-black hair and an inescapable air of sadness. A crow with a broken wing in jeans and a flannel shirt. I didn't want a desk job. I wanted to shed my feathers and crawl out of my skin and do something completely different. So instead, I put on some pantyhose and lipstick and talked my way into the job as an activities assistant at a retirement home. What else was I going to do?

{To be continued...}